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'League Of Denial' Portrays NFL As Villains. But Who Will Care?

FRONTLINE's documentary about the NFL, and Commissioner Roger Goodell, paints a disturbing picture of football and brain injuries.

Name the last PBS documentary that changed American sports, or business, or law.

I’m still waiting. And I sadly doubt “League of Denial” — the excellent, chilling new FRONTLINE special, which aired on Tuesday night — will be the first, even if its supporters desperately hope otherwise.

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The two-hour documentary draws on a book of the same name by ESPN investigative reporters Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, also out today. Both versions of “League of Denial” tell the twisted story of how the NFL has spent two decades appearing to bully doctors, mislead players, and conceal links between football and brain disease, all in the name of preserving itself.

And the evidence mounts as the film moves along.

We see slices of ex-players’ brains tainted by chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

We meet a surgeon who helped discover the disease, and who talks about how the politics of football essentially destroyed his career.

We go inside the NFL’s odd decisions to rely on physicians like rheumatologist Elliot Pellman, who had no real competence in assessing or treating brain trauma, to set the league’s health and safety strategy.

In one scene, a former Pittsburgh Steeler named Mike Webster struggles to answer simple questions in a TV interview. A Hall of Fame football player, Webster ended up dying, homeless and broke, several years later; post-concussion syndrome was listed as a cause of death on the autopsy report.*

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It’s sad, gripping reporting. You should watch “League of Denial.” But will you?

It was too much for one professional sports journalist that I follow on Twitter. “Had to turn it off,” he tweeted. “Too intense. Too powerful.”

And can a documentary that ended up airing on public television — because the nervous NFL forced ESPN to abandon the project — actually make a difference?

At New York Magazine, Dan Amira suggests that you’ll never watch football the same way again. Responding to a question on Twitter, Bleacher Report‘s Will Carroll said “League of Denial” would resonate because it was the “first time” the story of the NFL’s evasion was “compellingly told in mass media.”

Perhaps.

“I’m not sure it has that much influence,” according to one ex-PBS official I asked on Tuesday night. “The FRONTLINE series during the financial crisis was excellent and it could have had some weight in how the SEC dealt with the banks. But [you] can’t know for sure.”

For those who have followed the concussion story, there was very little in the documentary that was new. Even the casual fan at this point knows that football is linked to brain disease. Based on the TV ratings for the latest NFL season, that knowledge doesn’t appear to have made a difference.

Keep in mind that since 2008, the NFL already has survived:

More than 30 front-page stories in the New York Times investigating the link between football and concussions;

Prime-time investigations into concussions on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and CNN;

Congressional hearings;

The suicide of several ex-players who turned out to have CTE–including Junior Seau, a marketable star; and

It’s odd to think that a documentary shown by FRONTLINE — which draws less than 3 million viewers for a new film, or about one-quarter of the audience of A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” — is somehow going to turn the tide. No matter how well-made and compelling the film turned out to be.

“It’s nearly impossible to shake an addiction,” tweeted Paul Anderson, the lawyer who runs NFLConcussionLitigation.com and has led a crusade to increase awareness of brain injuries. “Even if it’s killing people.”

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You are far too young, as are most everyone who will read your blog, to remember that once boxing was high school and collegiate sport. For several decades it was a widely practiced intermural sport for youth. Top schools offered boxing scholarships to produce competitive line-ups. It took the deaths of more than few young boxers to eliminate this sport from schools. While professional boxing still remains, it is really a ghost of its former self. Boxing was probably the second most popular professional sport in the United States after baseball. The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports brought boxing into many Friday nights. There were boxing clubs in every town, often several. The fate of professional boxers was well known, none too different from professional football players (Mohammed Ali is good, or rather sad, example of what boxing does to a man). Eventually the brutality and crippling physical damage took its toll on the fan base as well as the boxers themselves. Perhaps this is the fate of football as well.

Thank you for reading, for the thoughtful comment, and the charitable (if accurate) assessment of my age.

Like you, it wouldn’t shock me if the NFL in 30 years is where boxing is today. I just don’t agree with the sportswriters and pundits who were suggesting that this documentary would somehow deal a major blow to the NFL. Especially because the league already has shrugged off hit after hit.

Perhaps I’m wrong — maybe “League of Denial” becomes the next breakout documentary. But at this point, it might take something extra-horrific — a player dying on the field, or a star QB suffering early-onset dementia — for fans to turn away in droves.

It all starts with the parents. I love football more than anybody on the planet, but my love of the sport stops when my son could potentially have long term brain damage from playing. Those players have to be replaced each year by younger players for the game to exist. I can’t imagine a competent, loving parent who would allow their child to take such a risk. There are other sports that can be played that do not involve potential brain damage.

But as Dr. Omalu said in the documentary, if even 10% of American mothers will no longer allow their children to play the game, then football will no longer be the same. My father and all his brothers played football. My brother and all his friends including Steve Fainaru played football. After learning the facts about chronic traumatic brain injury, my son has decided not to play football and we can no longer enjoy watching football the way that we once did. The cognitive impairment described in this documentary – the facts about how impaired Troy Aikman was, for example – make it impossible to look at the game in the same way. This is just the right time for the book and documentary and I think it will make a difference. Thinking people can no longer turn away from the fact that there are now 765 million reasons why you don’t want to play football.

Then your son shouldn’t participate in soccer, lacrosse or hockey. If you have a daughter, she shouldn’t participate in cheerleading, soccer or lacrosse then too. All these sports of have a high risk and have been linked to a high prevalence of catastrophic injuries (which include concussions, ligament tears and bone breaks).

Please have a realistic view. Women’s soccer has a concussion rate the rivals football and hockey does too. The difference between these sports and the NFL is that they are not a billion dollar giant that the NFL is.

If you are going to persecute one sports, do some research about the other “safer” sports and make an accurate assessment.

Concussions are but one problem associated with football. There are many others.

Consider spine and neck injuries. The ostensible purpose of the helmet is to protect the player wearing it from getting injured but in fact it also has the purpose allowing the player wearing the helmet to better injure his opponent and himself. A player is much less likely to lower his head to make a “head-down” tackle if he is not wearing helmet. “Spearing” would be far less common without helmets. Similarly, on offense, backs are taught to tuck the ball in tight against their ribs and put their heads down as a defender gets close to break through. Helmets allow players to use their head (neck and spine) as a battering ram against their opponent which is ultimately more dangerous to both.

It would be very interesting to compare head, neck, and spinal injury rates between American and Canadian football where helmets are used, and rugby and Australian football where helmets are not used. The odds are pretty good that the rates would be lower for the players not using helmets, particularly for compressive spinal injuries (while the rates of groin pulls would probably be about the same).

In other sports, injuries occur incidental to the course of play. If a cheerleader falls from a pyramid, that was was an accident. If a soccer player takes a hard hit to the head from a well kicked ball, it was an accident. Modern football on the other is designed to injure players, injuries are not by accident.

Except for that fact that putting a person in a pyramid or completing a cheerleading stunt are planned actions and are choreographed. Thus making then pre-planned occurance, making them not an accident. They are taking part of an action that has an extreme chance of causing bodily harm. Much like a football player is taking a chance to when they play football for extreme bodly harm. You can’t use “accident” to fit the definition of your argument. Modern cheerleading is designed to put its participants through multiple high risk gymnastic moves, pyramids and partner stunts.

Here’s a video to further demonstrate that the moves and dangers are no “accidents”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qo6P0Gua10

Seem pretty planned and organized to me.

Also heading the ball, to score a goal and excute a pass is not an accident, it’s a plan technique with-in the game. This is when most concussions occure.

Once again don’t munipulate the word “accident” to fit you definition for a debate. A fender bender is an accident. Heading a ball in soccer and a back handspring in to full-tuck is not an accident.

Actually, many suggest that soccer players do not start heading until they are at least 14, especially for girls due to weaker necks. The same studies have also shown that if a person with a strong neck, uses good technique, and is prepared to head the ball, then there is not what you seem to be alluding to. I am all for every player in soccer wearing concussion helmets regardless and have the reinforced for heading. Also, change the ball for less kinetic energy.

You do not head the ball on every play or even in most plays. In football, if you are on the line, almost every play is a head collision. I think they have outlawed the head slap as that also used to happen on the line a lot ! If soccer shows to be as bad as football, I doubt if for men, then they too will either adapt or become a marginal sport.

Because I have too much reverence for my body, I did not continue to play football, and when I played soccer, all the coaches’ yelling would not make me head a ball for which I did not feel comfortable doing so. So, I did not make it to higher levels. I know a lot of kids that avoid heading for that very reason.

To compare “ligament tears and bone breaks” to irreversible brain damage is flawed. In any sport athletes are pushing their bodies to the limit, playing through pain; sports inherently are dangerous. Of course head injuries happen in other sports. I don’t think that is the point.

The thing I found most disturbing when watching this documentary was the way the NFL went after doctors, and scientist. The way they systematically denied, and hid the science and research that these doctors were uncovering.

No one is forcing these people to compete in the NFL. It’s a choice that has risks that come along with it. As a sports doctor myself, very simply I can assure you that running full speed into a dynamic brick wall over and over is not good for you. This is no surprise. They get paid the big money to put their neck on the line, and it literally is. Their choice on whether they want to accept that risk and step onto the field.

As backwards as it may sound, we’d probably have less concussions with less equipment. Now we have armor all over and feel invincible to go head to head, we simply go harder. It would be interesting to see how leather helmets would change the game.